The chair of council's government management committee, a Mayor Rob Ford ally, is pushing a change in the way Toronto elects its mayor.

Toronto’s council might vote in the fall on whether to use a different election system in 2018 and beyond.

At the request of Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee and council’s government management committee, city elections officials are now studying a proposal to switch to a ranked ballot system. Councillor Paul Ainslie, the government management chair and a Ford ally, said he plans to bring the proposal to the council floor in November.

The group that has spearheaded the push for ranked ballots, the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT), says 18 of the 45 members of council have endorsed the idea, including four members of Ford’s executive committee. While an endorsement-in-principle does not necessarily mean a committed vote, and while the Star could not independently confirm all of the endorsements, a 23-vote majority appears within reach.

“I think there’s an excellent chance of getting it through government management, and I think there’s just as good a chance of it getting through city council. And that’s kind of the first hurdle,” Ainslie said.

The second: the provincial government would need to approve. According to the Ranked Ballot Initiative’s Dave Meslin, a prominent local activist, municipal affairs minister Kathleen Wynne has told him that she does not believe the province should stand in the city’s way if council votes in favour.

Wynne spokesperson Kelly Baker did not dispute Meslin’s account. “The minister always says she’s a firm believer in local democracy,” she said. “And I think that if city council, if it were something that they were receptive to, then absolutely we’ll take a look at the request. But we have to really see what city council has to say about it first.”

Ainslie said “the biggest hurdle” is technology. He said it could cost the city $4 million to $5 million to purchase the new tabulation machines that would be needed. Meslin said city officials have told him that the city was going to buy new machines anyway. The city would not clarify in response to a Star request, saying only that “Elections Services will be looking at its options with respect to the equipment.”

The ranked ballot system typically works as follows. Instead of choosing a single candidate, as they do now, voters are free to rank candidates in the order they prefer them. (A “1” for their favourite, a “2” for their second favourite, “3” for their third.) If a candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — more than 50 per cent — the election is over.

But if no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes — say, if the most popular candidate has 35 per cent — the least popular candidate is eliminated, and the second-place votes of that candidate’s supporters are added to the totals of the candidates who remain. This process of elimination and addition, known as an instant runoff, continues until someone has a majority.

At present, a widely disliked councillor can be re-elected with the support of even a quarter of the vote because several lesser-known challengers split the opposition vote. The ranked ballot, Meslin said, would ensure that the victor is truly the pick of the people while also weakening the powerful advantage enjoyed by municipal incumbents.

“It’s so hard when you’re running against the machine," said Councillor Jaye Robinson, a member of Ford’s executive who unseated an incumbent in 2010. “I think this would level the playing field.”

Elections officials are also studying Meslin’s proposal for elections to be held on weekends rather than on weekdays.

Meslin wants the ranked ballot adopted for the mayoral and councillor elections in 2014. Ainslie said it would likely be introduced only for the mayoral election in 2018, then for councillors elections after that.

Australia uses the ranked ballot in federal elections. San Francisco, Minneapolis and Oakland use it in mayoral elections. Canada’s political parties use a similar system — multiple rounds of voting until one candidate has a majority — to elect their leaders.

“It’s quite interesting that political parties themselves decide that in order to have a strong, compelling and legitimate democratic mandate, the person who leads their party has to have the support of at least a majority of the voting members. If that’s good enough at the leadership selection level, I think it should also prevail at the public elected candidate level,” said Ryerson University politics professor Myer Siemiatycki.

With vote-splitting a non-concern, underdog fresh faces would face less backroom pressure to drop out of the running to make way for a like-minded candidate perceived as stronger, Meslin said. Voters would no longer feel compelled to vote strategically, to prevent a certain candidate from winning, rather than for the candidate they truly prefer most.

Votes would no longer be “wasted,” Meslin said. And because candidates would vie to become the second choice of their opponents’ supporters, said Ainslie, there would be far less “mudslinging” and a new focus on substantive issues.

“This is such a no-brainer, it’s so simple, and I think it would change the whole political culture,” said Meslin.

It is not a no-brainer, however, for the incumbent councillors who would be effectively voting to hurt their own re-election prospects. In 2010, Ward 12 incumbent Frank Di Giorgio won with only 27 per cent of the vote. Ward 10 newcomer James Pasternak beat 11 competitors to win a vacant seat with only 19 per cent.

“What we don’t want to turn municipal elections into is multiple-guess,” said Pasternak, a centrist. “Why would we introduce an electoral reform that adds confusion, adds cost, and could put downward pressures on turnout?”

Pasternak rejected the suggestion that a majority is needed for the winner to be seen as legitimate. “In my ward, where we had perhaps one of the most vibrant, thrilling electoral battles, the side effect is the person who wins has a lower percentage of the total vote — but was able to get their message across clear enough that they were able to rise to the top of a 12-person field,” he said.

Other political considerations may make the ranked ballot a tougher sell. Though the switch would likely take effect two elections from now, the proposal may still be seen some of Ford’s supporters as a stealth attempt to undermine him. The inclusion of second choices would appear to make victory less likely for a polarizing conservative with a large base of devotees but little lukewarm support.

Some political scientists say the ranked ballot system has a key flaw. Under some circumstances, a candidate can actually be hurt, not helped, if more voters make him or her their first choice. Other political scientists say this rarely happens in real-life elections.

Perhaps the system’s most significant drawback: it is at least slightly more complicated than the current system. The Ranked Ballot Initiative says the system is “easy as 1, 2, 3,” but it would undoubtedly be harder for some voters to understand than the one-X system they are used to — and which many voters don't have a problem with. In a 2007 referendum in which Ontarians were asked to pick between the status quo and a form of proportional representation, 63 per cent picked the status quo.

Ford opponent Gord Perks said he believes other potential reforms, such as allowing non-citizen residents to vote — as former mayor David Miller advocated — would be superior. Toronto’s “democratic deficits,” he said, have more to do with social and economic marginalization than its electoral math.

“I’d probably support (the switch to ranked ballots),” he said. “I just don’t see it as the tremendous change that some people seem to think it would be.”

Ford voted for a 2010 motion from the conservative who led his mayoral transition team, then-councillor Case Ootes, that asked the city to study “alternate methods of electing the mayor.” Ainslie said Ford has told him he is “open” to the ranked ballot proposal this year.

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